


Roses in December

by antonomasia09



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Birthday, Birthday Party, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dreamsharing, F/M, Gen, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 08:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5450411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antonomasia09/pseuds/antonomasia09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George uses dreamsharing technology to restore his memories after the stroke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roses in December

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zoi no miko (zoi_no_miko)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoi_no_miko/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Sorry that I couldn't fit Niska in and that this is kind of het-ish; I realized pretty quickly that I couldn't write about George and Odi without Mary.
> 
> I'm handwaving the science in this, so just assume that George figured out a way to connect Odi's memory center directly to the PASIV in order to get around Odi's lack of a subconscious.

“A happy memory,” George requested, as usual.

Odi hooked him up to the PASIV, steady hands gliding the needle into George’s vein. As the somnacin entered his bloodstream and his eyes drifted shut, he watched Odi sit down next to him and grasp his own connecting wire.

They were at home, in the living room. The melancholy chords of “Clair de Lune” hung heavily in the air, drifting over quietly from the radio. George was settled into his favorite armchair, while Odi sat stiffly on the couch, a party hat perched on his head at a jaunty angle. Judging by the clatter of pots and pans coming from the next room, Mary was probably in the kitchen. George checked Odi’s eyes- blue, as they always were in the dream world, unlike the emerald of reality.

The black market men he’d bought the PASIV from had warned George about recreating scenarios from his own life, but so far, he hadn’t had any problems distinguishing the dream from reality. After all, they weren't _his_ memories.

Mary appeared in the doorway with a cake in her hands, a projection as perfect as possible given the limitation of Odi’s sensors and the relatively short amount of time he’d spent with her. George’s breath caught, as it always did when he saw her in the dreams. She looked younger than the last time he and Odi did this- less tired, more vibrant. Before her relapse, then.

Mary gestured for him to turn off the light, and he obliged, leaning over to switch off the lamp behind him. The room plunged into darkness, the only illumination coming from two candles on the cake she held.

It couldn’t be George’s birthday; that was in the middle of the summer, but right now he was feeling chilly in his sweater vest. Couldn’t be Mary’s, because she was the one carrying the cake. So that left…

_“Happy birthday to you,”_ she sang, and George joined in. His warm baritone was an amusing counterpoint to Mary’s off-key soprano. _“Happy birthday, dear Odi. Happy birthday to you.”_

Odi looked at Mary, confused, as she settled the cake on the coffee table in front of him. It was covered in tiny toy trucks spread along a winding iced road, with green frosting representing grass. “I tried to bake you a cake, but it…didn’t work out. So I had to run to Tesco last-minute, and this was all they had,” she apologized to him.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” he answered. “I don’t understand. The anniversary of my date of manufacture passed several months ago, and does not require a celebration in any case.”

George tried not to think of Odi in a warehouse, motionless, stored like some sort of household appliance along with hundreds of other synths. Of course Odi wouldn’t have been awake for it, but the idea still made George shudder.

“Just fake it, Odi. Please?” George said gently.

Odi tilted his head and spoke softly. “I am recreating my actions and words from the first time this event occurred, as is Mary.”

“No that’s not what I meant,” said George, shaken a little by the reminder that this was a dream. It was all too easy to slip into the action this time, surrounded by his family. He glanced at Mary, but she was fussing around the cake, giving no indication that she’d heard what Odi said. “Pretend it’s your birthday.”

Odi frowned at him. “But that’s not what happened. You asked for a memory.”

“Change it,” George told him. “Change the memory. Make it better.”

Odi still didn’t look like he understood, but he answered, “Certainly, George,” and smiled up at Mary.

“We’re celebrating the fact that you’ve been with us for a year.” Mary indicated the candles. “One for your first year, and one for good luck.”

“I cannot blow them out,” Odi said. “Synths lack the ability to expel air.”

“That’s all right. We’ll help you.”

The three of them gathered close around the cake.

“Make a wish, Odi,” George said, and waited for Odi’s nod. Together, they all leaned over and blew. The candles flickered out.

For a second, in the darkness, George wondered if that was it, if time had gone by so quickly and the memory was already over. But then Mary switched on the lamp again, and he breathed a sigh of relief at the familiar portraits on the walls of the living room. He settled back into his armchair.

Mary handed Odi a knife, and guided him through cutting three large pieces of cake, while George watched contentedly.

“You have to smear some of the icing on your nose,” George said through his first mouthful. “It’s traditional.”

Odi obligingly bent over and raked his face through the remainder of the cake, to exclamations of disgust from both George and Mary.

“That’s not what I meant!” exclaimed George, but then burst out laughing at the sight of Odi’s face, dripping with chocolate and frosting.

“Is this satisfactory?” Odi asked him.

George waved a vague hand towards the bathroom. “Go clean yourself off,” he said once he recovered enough breath to speak.

Odi rose gracefully and disappeared into the loo. George caught Mary’s eye, and they both dissolved into helpless laughter again.

George recovered his breath first, and drank in the sight of Mary, still doubled over with giggles. There were so many things that he wanted to say to her. So many little things- comments about the garden, the neighbors. So many reassurances. So many _I love you’s_. But alone in her presence, he was speechless. And then Odi came back, face clean, and the moment was lost.

“Is that for me?” Odi asked George, who realized that he was holding something soft covered in wrapping paper with small stylized pictures of robots. He wasn’t sure if it had existed a minute ago.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, and handed it over. Odi unwrapped it carefully to reveal a brown knitted sweater- the same one that Odi was wearing in the real world.

“Mary’s mother made this for you for Christmas ten years ago,” Odi told him. 

“That’s right!” George said, the memory flooding back. “I never wore it because it was itchy, but I figured it should get some use. Sorry,” he added to Mary, who just looked mildly amused.

“At least you’re not trying to make him wear the one with the reindeer,” she said.

George agreed, fuzzily picturing a lumpy monstrosity featuring an ambiguous woodland creature. He turned back to Odi. “I hope you enjoy it.”

“I am not programmed to experience enjoyment,” Odi said. When George’s smile slipped, he added, “But I will certainly make use of the sweater. Thank you, George.”

“You’re welcome, Odi.”

Mary nudged George. “You wanted to make a speech?” she reminded him.

“I did?”

She nodded.

“Oh. Um.” He poured through his sketchy memories of the past six years. Seeing Odi for the first time and getting petty satisfaction from the fact that whatever hotshot engineer David Elster had replaced him with hadn’t been able to fix the glitching AC motor for the L3 joint either. His initial resentment at needing help around the house, which had turned to gratitude once Odi saved both Mary and their home from an unlucky electrical short. Patching Odi up afterwards personally instead of returning him to the factory to be scrapped, although Odi’s right arm never regained its full range of motion.

“I may not have been…enthusiastic about the idea of having you around at first,” George said finally, ignoring Mary’s snort at the depth of his understatement. “The truth is, I didn’t want to admit that I was getting older. That life was progressing, and that one day it might come to an end.” He made the mistake of meeting Mary’s eyes, and had to pause to swallow the lump in his throat.

“But you’ve become a part of our family now,” he continued. “You’ve taken better care of us than any flesh and blood child could have. And I know that it’s your job, but I still have to say thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done for us. Everything.”

He waved a hand that encompassed the house, Mary, and the dream as a whole, and he thought he saw a flicker of understanding on Odi’s face.

The radio clicked and then the faint notes of Craig Armstrong’s “Balcony Scene” floated towards him. He could feel the gravity in the house begin to shift as the kick started, sending all the furniture sliding slowly to one end of the room.

“Happy birthday, Odi.” He gave the synth’s hair a fond pat and buried his nose in it for a quick kiss.

With one last lingering look at his family, he let himself fall into the blackness.

 

“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.” -J.M. Barrie

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone reading this who is unfamiliar with Inception:  
> [PASIV](http://inception.wikia.com/wiki/Portable_Automated_Somnacin_IntraVenous_Device)  
> [Somnacin](http://inception.wikia.com/wiki/Somnacin)
> 
> [Clair de Lune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY)   
>  [Balcony Scene-Romeo and Juliet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je3KyWWW8pA)
> 
> Also, I'm pretty sure that George found out about dreamsharing when a team tried to perform an extraction on David Elster to learn the key to creating conscious synths. That's a completely different story, though.


End file.
